Until they watch a video of an overweight Ballmer sweating, shouting, cursing, and throwing chairs at his own people.

That's also why many businesses switched to Apple when Steve Jobs was around. Steve Jobs was well known for his saint-like patience and composure with his underlings.

So who cares if he doesn't have the legal right to.

Assuming he didn't burn his bridges with his former client (or employer), there is still a thing called common courtesy (yes, yes, it still exists in most places, despite what we might read on Slashdot and Groklaw).

He could even contact the new developer directly (without going through his former client). If I were the new maintenance developer, I'd be put back his name on the files in no time, to avoid this getting back to upper management (assuming I'd still have access to the code).

I doubt it.

The only reason people are afraid of Google Glass is because they haven't tried it yet (the current generation at least). The default video recording duration is only 10 seconds, plus it lights up when it's recording. That 10 seconds can be extended, but its battery is severely limited and the entire frame heats up when you record something with it for too long (hence the super short default duration).

If anyone wants to do covert surveillance, they'll have better luck using just about any other cell phone/ and slip it backwards in their shirt pocket. Most cell phones don't notify others they're being recorded with a light. And most other cell phones can be turned on inconspicuously also (without fiddling with your glass frame, or telling your glass in a super loud voice "Ok Glass, take a picture" or "Ok Glass, video-record". Also with a cell phone, you can record something for 30 minutes to 60 minutes without completely draining your battery and without making your head catch on fire. For now, just think of Google Glass as a super expensive fashion accessory, that's turned off most of the time. I supp

The 5th amendment is all about curtailing power.

For instance, let's assume for a moment that Bennett Haselton's wasn't into rape and wasn't into child pornography (despite the anti-censorship web sites he founded and despite his completely unsolicited and off-topic comment about masturbation). Would any of us believe it?

Never completely, for us to believe that Bennett wasn't into those things, he would have to recount to us under oath and under the penalty of perjury his entire sexual history -- down to minute details (so that it can be corroborated with his previous sexual partners). His computer would also have to be searched exhaustively.

And since proving a negative is almost impossible, we would almost never be sure he wasn't a rapist and that he didn't withhold some other important piece of information. So with his help, we would have to establish a timeline from birth until today detailing every activity he ever undertook. And if one day, we discovered that he lied or omitted anything in his life, then we could put in prison for perjury and question him more about his omission or lie to find out what he was hiding.

And that's the thing, the person with all the power gets to ask all the questions (and even lie), and the person without the power only gets to answer all the questions truthfully (or goes to jail). I believe that's the outcome Bennett Haselton is looking for by wanting to get rid of the 5th amendment.

Yes, San Francisco would love an industry-wide cell phone kill-switch.

The next time, there is Bart cop shooting a person in the back while that person he's laying face-down on the floor, witnesses won't be able to upload the video on youtube before their phone gets confiscated.

Also, think of the ramifications the next time there is a mass protest. It would be great if you could kill cell phones from thousands protesters, all from only one switch. That would be a Mayor's wet dream!

The Prius does indeed restrict the front seating passenger from using most of its center panel functions when the car is moving, which is really idiotic because it's smart enough to know there is a passenger in the seat (since it will complain loudly when that same passenger doesn't put his seat belt on).

Sheesh... It's a freaking clock!!

Yes, it's a cop-out, but why is this even a story on Slashdot? And what is the point of duplicating clock functionality that's already on someone's computer anyway?

Again, what is point of doing that on the bbc web site?

Ah yes, you're referring to this

Besides, I never even understood the reasoning behind this justification to condemn all Palestinians for an alleged radio broadcast supposedly sent from a different Arab country. If you're a civilian and not part of the military, since when does fleeing a region about to become a battlefield even considered a crime? Are you suggesting that non-military people should just stay there, Arab or not, while two armies are supposedly converging on each other?

Someone must have ripped you off.

Right now, they sell in China for $25

Less with FedEx, their drivers are independent contractors.

Frankly, it doesn't even have to be just the US and its allies against Julian Assange. Nor does it even need to be China, or some of the other countries exposed by Wikileaks.

By leaking war secrets and government secrets (and even banking secrets), Julian Assange didn't just piss off the governments the leaks were from. He pissed off many right-leaning individuals who believe wars are necessarily messy, and average people should be protected from being exposed to them. And he pissed off many people in power who believe government secrets should be kept secret, whether some of those people in power are corrupt politicians, or goodie-to-shoes who just believe that on average their own government usually knows better than its own people.

The motive is not bad PR. It's money.

If Microsoft decided to pay for potential exploits (like Google does, or like criminal organizations do), I have no doubt that the researcher in question would be holding off on full disclosure just so he could collect on his bounty. Also, the summary is a bit misleading. He did give Microsoft five days three years ago. Five days is not a lot of time, but considering he isn't getting paid for his find, he probably doesn't care.

And yes, you could attribute this malice to his employer Google, but my guess is that he was doing this kind of thing long before he joined Google. That's probably how he got noticed and hired by Google in the first place.

Is Julian Assange really afraid of extradition? Personally, I think he's more afraid of indefinite detention in a Swedish government facility while being stuck in indefinite legal limbo.

In any case, does extradition even matter anymore? Sweden just went against common sense, against its own body of laws, and against existing precedents to redefine what a "rape" is supposed to be viewed like. Do you think that's just a coincidence? In my opinion, that's what Julian Assange should really be afraid of, the redefinition of law for his own "special" case and the prospect of being stuck indefinitely in a prison facility (where contact with the outside world is severely controlled and limited and your visitors are harassed and stripped-searched, assuming visitors are even allowed at all).

Because the probability that the CIA will be successful in killing him in Ecuador is less than 100%, but should he return to Sweden, the probability that he will have to lose his freedom, be forced to stop most of his work, and be prosecuted under dubious just-made-up legal theory, is much closer to 100%.

Are you kidding me? If Assange was really extradited to the US. London would have a huge riot on its hands (and rightly so). And the current government would probably have to step down (or at least, make sure Assange never actually makes it on that plane, so that things can get back to normal without having the government needing to resign).

In any case, the extradition itself is a strawman. The threat of extradition and the legal limbo it creates, or the redefinition of "rape" and the legal limbo it creates, are more than enough to put Julian Assange under ice and out of commission for a number of years, even if none of those proceedings ever finally go through.

Except that if one digs down deep enough, it wasn't the fact that he entered too many science fairs that was the problem (nor the sequence of the entries as the author of the article tries to imply, after all, even in science fairs, an element of chance is involved, since the judges are different and also your competition is different for each regional you enter).

It's the fact that he entered the very same science project multiple times to the same science fair competition through its different affiliated regional competitions. In other words, it's the fact that he tried to game the system (with the complicity of his high school) and tried gain an advantage over his fellow contestants (and then tried to feign ignorance, or simple-minded reasoning, or victimhood at having that unfair advantage taken away from him and thrown back into the pool).

Probably, this teenager will be financially successful later in life, but to me, as a potential employer, this tells me that his kid (now almost already an adult) won't have any problem skirting the rules and double-dipping when it comes to applying for research grants, or double-dipping when it comes to submitting expense reports, or receiving benefits/incentives, and then whining about it endlessly like a baby when some of those risky decisions catch up back to him and bite him in the ass.

His office? The location was a regional campaign headquarters with noone sitting at the reception desk (after an alleged press conference) and Sen. Mitch McConnell was having an all-hands meeting in a conference room with a window opened into the hallway.

Granted, that Senator may still have had an expectation of privacy, but the Kentucky statute for eavesdropping is certainly not on his side for this one.

Nor is the other statute for hidden cameras any help to the Senator either, since it explicitly narrows itself to "unattended hidden cameras" (see pdf), not hidden cameras on one's person.

So not only it was the right idea for the blogger activist to use a handheld flip-cam to record the words from the politician (at least for Kentucky), but that entire recording may be the only thing that ends up saving him since its obvious flaws in audio are evidence that the recorder was of cheap quality and wasn't ever stationary -- nor left unattended, and the video part is the only reliable proof that he wasn't trespassing and that the conference room window was open.

Had he had not this video recording of himself doing this, he would probably be in jail right now for trespassing, for wiretapping, and probably for a hundred different false crimes thought up by the Senator's team.